Once upon a time in a faraway land, Harry and Grasshopper were great friends. They couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t been friends and maybe this was just as well. Harry’s mind was a bit fuzzy on the details of how they had met and he didn’t like to think about it too much. It gave him a headache, thinking too much. Grasshopper didn’t think very much about anything and this was one of the things Harry especially liked about him. He didn’t talk very much either, which Harry liked too.
Harry looked up at his friend and thought for a moment, only a moment, about the one thing Grasshopper did that really bothered him. Grasshopper sprang off, with a great Hop! into the tall green grass and Harry sighed “There he goes again.” he thought to himself and stopped. Not that Harry was ever in a hurry. Hurry and Harry didn’t really go together. Harry chuckled at his own little joke, tucked his head inside his tortoise shell and settled down for a nap.
“Harry! Harry!” Grasshopper’s voice was filled with excitement. Harry groaned. No, it wasn’t Grasshopper’s hopping that bothered him. Hopping was in his nature. Harry knew this, knew that Grasshopper was, after all, a grasshopper and that’s what grasshoppers did. They hopped. Oh no, what really, really, really bothered Harry, he thought again to himself, almost feeling his head ache with the pain of it, was Grasshopper’s excitability. He was “so dramatic!” Harry rolled his eyes to heaven and sighed again.
“What is it this time Grasshopper?” he said, pulling a blade of grass from between his teeth, where it had somehow managed to get stuck while he slept.
“Look!” Grasshopper hopped, his antennae quivering with excitement.
“Look!” he shouted, pointing one spindly leg across the plane towards the sandstone hills in the distance.
“What now?” Harry thought to himself, moving slowly over the sun baked earth so that he could see what all the latest fuss was about. He craned his neck first this way, then that, turning to his right and then to his left. He saw hills, scrub bushes, a tree in the distance.
“What?!” Harry snapped at his friend’s jumping and hopping. “What is it now?!”
“Look Harry! Look!” Grasshopper jumped up and down, dancing and dashing so that Harry had to look away because the quick flash of grasshopper-green against the grass was making him dizzy. Harry tried again to see what all this fuss was about and then gasped. “Oh my!”
The ground began to tremble beneath his feet and he pulled his head tight to his shoulders in fright. Grasshopper, quick as a flash, hopped expertly onto Harry’s back and shouted “Come on Harry! Hurry!” Grasshopper bounced up and down on Harry’s back, eager to be off.
“I can’t hurry.” said Harry in a huff. “You hop. Fine. I can’t hurry. When, Grasshopper, are you ever going to learn that?” Still, Harry, against his better judgment, put one foot before the other and step by step moved towards the darkening sandstone hills. Slowly, as the day drew to a close, the stars showed themselves, one by one against the blackened sky and Harry paused, tired after his long walk, beside a rocky outcrop.
“How many do you think there are?” Grasshopper whispered in his ear.
“Don’t do that!” Harry snapped. “You know I can’t scratch my ear!”
“Sorry.” Grasshopper said happily, knowing that Harry wasn’t really cross. Just Harry, that’s all. Just Harry.
Harry thought for a moment, trying to remember his counting and adding. Lots, he decided. There were lots of them.
“Where have they come from?” Grasshopper whispered again.
Harry banged first his left foot and then his right on the ground.
“Sorry Harry.” Grasshopper jumped off and away, knowing that Harry really was cross now. That was the good thing about friends, Harry decided. They knew the signs and it was okay to be cross with them because it didn’t mean that you weren’t friends anymore. It just meant that you were cross at what they were doing. If they stopped doing it and said they were sorry, then it was okay. You could go right on back to being friends again. If they didn’t? Well, Harry didn’t like to think about that because, more than anything else, that really made his head hurt. Harry nodded off again, happy with the quiet of the evening and the cool dark air all around. His head lolled gently from side to side as he dreamed of lettuce leaves and other juicy tortoise delights.
“I counted them!” Grasshopper bounced back, suddenly.
“Mmm?” Harry muttered.
“There are one hundred and twenty-eight.” Grasshopper announced proudly.
“How can you tell?” Harry asked, his eyes wide open now, all this thinking threatening to burst his head right off his body.
“Easy.” said Grasshopper, delighted with the chance to show off. “I counted their legs.” With that announcement, Grasshopper lay back against a rock, folded his arms across his chest and grinned at the night sky.
Harry sighed. Grasshopper was young and didn’t really know much but he forgave him. A bit flashy was Grasshopper, Harry thought to himself but that was okay too because he was his friend and Harry accepted that that was just the way Grasshopper was.
“Okay.” he said patiently. “Let me get this straight.” He paused, checking whether Grasshopper was really listening. And he waited. And waited. That was one thing Harry was good at. Waiting. Grasshopper stopped his sky gazing for long enough to say “Yes?” and then settled back again, counting the stars above him.
“You counted legs.” Harry began again. And paused again. And waited again.
Grasshopper sat up and looked crossly at Harry.
“Yes. Yes. I counted legs.” He stared Harry right in the eye and then flung himself back against the rock in a huff.
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” he sang to the stars. “I counted legs.”
Harry shifted his weight from one leg to another. He found it helped him to think. One, two, three, four, he counted as he moved each leg in turn.
“And you counted how many legs?” he asked sweetly
“One-hundred-and-twenty-eight!” Grasshopper shouted. “Honestly Harry, sometimes you can be so dumb. One-hundred-and-twenty-eight!”
Harry too looked up at the sky and smiled. A kind, loving, ‘well he is my friend’ smile and asked sweetly. “Grasshopper, how many legs do I have?”
“Four, Harry. What are you talking about?” Grasshopper’s words faded away and he looked at Harry for a moment, then laughed. “Of course!” he shouted, hopping off the rock and dancing up and down in front of Harry’s nose. “One-hundred-and-twenty-eight divided by four.” he said, kissing Harry squarely on the top of his head. One-hundred-and-twenty-eight divided by four.” Grasshopper said again.
“That makes…”
“Thirty-two Grasshopper.” Harry added kindly. “That makes thirty two giraffes.” slowly turning towards the open plane again. “Come on Grasshopper.” he called over his shoulder. “Tomorrow’s another day. Another day for more adventures.”
Grasshopper counted and counted and then, afraid that Harry might get too far ahead, he hurried after him. “Silly me.
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